A common scenario that arises when using a collection of any sort, is to get perform a single type of operation with all the elements and collect the result.
For example, a sum(array)
function might wish to add all the elements
passed as the array and return the result.
A generalized abstraction of same functionality is provided in Ruby in the name
of reduce
(inject
is an alias). That is, these methods iterate over a
collection and accumulate the value of an operation on elements in a base value
using an operator and return that base value in the end.
Let's take an example for better understanding.
>>> (5..10).inject(1) {|product, n| product * n }
=> 151200
In above example, we have the following elements: a base value 1, an enumerable (5..10), and a block with expressions instructing how to add the calculated value to base value (i.e., multiply the array element to product, where product is initialized with base value)
So the execution follows something like this:
# loop 1
n = 1
product = 1
return value = 1*1
# loop 2
n = 2
product = 1
return value = 1*2
n = 3
product = 2
return value = 2*3
..
As you can notice, the base value is continually updated as the expression loops through the element of container, thus returning the final value of base value as result.
Other examples,
>>> (5..10).reduce(1, :*) # :* is shorthand for multiplication
=> 151200
Consider an arithmetico-geometric sequence where the term of the sequence
is denoted by . In this challenge, your task
is to complete the sum
method which takes an integer n
and returns the sum
to the n terms of the series.